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Sanza Pombo fire, August 2016 Milunga, Sanza Pombo

Out · last detection 4 Sept 2016, 12:56 UTC

The fire started on 15 August 2016 in Sanza Pombo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,507 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 37th largest in Uíge since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 73 in Angola in 2016, of 138.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Milunga · 2026Sanza Pombo · 2025Buengas · 2026Sanza Pombo · 2025

Burnt area
6,507ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
15 Aug 2016 – 4 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
15 Aug
2016
Heat detections
301
in a single hotspot: 283 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Average daily power
392MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Aug4 Sept
4 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

15 Aug 2016 · 7 MW · 1 17 Aug 2016 · 8 MW · 1 18 Aug 2016 · 16 MW · 2 19 Aug 2016 · 12 MW · 1 20 Aug 2016 · 125 MW · 4 23 Aug 2016 · 340 MW · 14 24 Aug 2016 · 286 MW · 22 25 Aug 2016 · 616 MW · 47 26 Aug 2016 · 1,573 MW · 49 27 Aug 2016 · 906 MW · 42 28 Aug 2016 · 41 MW · 5 31 Aug 2016 · 21 MW · 4 1 Sept 2016 · 1,047 MW · 41 2 Sept 2016 · 758 MW · 37 3 Sept 2016 · 424 MW · 25 4 Sept 2016 · 96 MW · 6
15 Aug 19 Aug 24 Aug 26 Aug 27 Aug 1 Sept 4 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

31°high
37km/h · peak gust
34%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 2 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (65 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Milunga
    5,275 ha reached on 17 Aug
    0.8 %
  2. Sanza Pombo where it started
    1,272 ha reached on 15 Aug
    0.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area2.4 ha
Residents≈ 450

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.4 hectares of built-up land and about 450 residents (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
20 Aug 31.2 °C 40 % 32 km/h 0.5 mm High 23
21 Aug 29.8 °C 45 % 28 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 16
22 Aug 28.9 °C 51 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
23 Aug 31.1 °C 42 % 33 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 18
24 Aug 30.2 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
25 Aug 29.6 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Aug 29.0 °C 41 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Aug 29.4 °C 42 % 37 km/h 0.5 mm High 26
28 Aug 29.2 °C 44 % 29 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 16
29 Aug 28.1 °C 47 % 27 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 19
30 Aug 32.5 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Aug 30.2 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm High 31
1 Sept 28.3 °C 49 % 32 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 20
2 Sept 29.3 °C 43 % 34 km/h 2.2 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 8 Aug 2016
After · 11 Sept 2016

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 301Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sanza Pombo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 August 2016 to 4 September 2016 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 August 2016 to 28 August 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,507 hectares (65.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Milunga (5,275 ha, 0.8 %); Sanza Pombo (1,272 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.2 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Angola (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 28 August 2016 → 4 September 2016.
  2. Start date: 20 August 2016 → 15 August 2016.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 August 2016 to 28 August 2016. 301 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Public Domain). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.